Friendship, success, family, purpose and love. (Oh yeah, and a sexy body.) Everybody wants some of that, right? This blog is about one woman's endeavor to find, and deal with, all of those things — and the never-ending struggle to keep her apartment clean.

When Life Gets You Down, Go Get Your Nails Done.

“What color are you thinking about today?” asked Dani, the awesome nail tech at Perfect Ten.

“Well, my boyfriend broke up with me on Friday,” I said, with a catch in my throat and a sniff of the snot that has been ever-present since Friday, “So I’m feeling kind of dark. But it is Spring, so I still want it to be fun.”

“You have some of the gun-metal grays. We could use one of them with shimmer.”

“Perfect,” I said as I picked up the polish she was pointing at. “I also want to do something a little…badass,” I said as I picked up a bright pink.

I try to do extra-nice things for myself when I’m feeling blue. Today, it was a

“Accent nail?”

“Yeah…the middle one.”

Her eye-brow went up and we headed to the counter

“I have a gift card, that he bought me actually,” I said as I sat down at the counter.

“Good,” she said. “Let’s spend his money.”

So, I’m a teacher, and angry Crystal is not the best version of me…So what? I now basically have a manicure that says,

“Fuck you.” And it feels great. I feel very rock ’n roll…and I don’t really care how prim I should be at the moment. I just needed a little something to make myself happy today. It worked. And I have smelled like the peach lotion Dani used all day.

So, I guess you could say I’m just peachy. If you like puns and want me to slap you in the face. I’m badass, dammit.

Yeah, break ups always suck…and this one has been especially hard. I was very invested in this guy. But, he is determined that it wouldn’t work out in the end, so he made kind of a preemptive strike. It’s so bizarre to be totally in love with someone who is totally in love with me and have him say we can’t be together.